Is China an enemy? To judge by the level of competence displayed in the Westminster espionage case, nobody is qualified to say.
Sir Keir Starmer has insisted the previous Tory government is to blame for the collapse of a high-profile case against two men accused of spying for China. That case, against Christopher Cash, a former parliamentary researcher who worked closely with MPs, and Christopher Berry – who were both accused of passing secrets to Beijing and both denied the charges – was dropped last month.
Director of public prosecutions Stephen Parkinson said the Crown Prosecution Service had tried “over many months” to get the evidence it needed from the government referring to China as a national security threat to carry out the prosecution, but it had not been forthcoming from the Labour government.
It begs the question: where will Britain draw the line? Last month the chief of MI6, Sir Richard Moore, called China an enduring challenge, ranking it with Russia and Iran. He blamed Beijing for helping Vladimir Putin to wage war against Ukraine.
“It is the support that China has consistently given to Russia, both diplomatically and also in terms of “dual use goods” – the “Made in China” chemicals that end up in their shells; the electronic components that end up in their missiles – that have prevented Putin from reaching the conclusion that peace is his best option,” he said in a rare public speech.
Nonetheless, we also know that President Xi Jinping called Putin to warn him against using a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, according to a book by the US journalist Bob Woodward which has not been denied. Moore acknowledged that China “straddles that dichotomy of opportunity and threat” as a major power with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. The head of MI5, Ken McCallum, is even more measured. “China is different,” he declared last year. “The UK-China economic relationship supports UK growth, which underpins our security.”
What a change in tone from 2022 when McCallum took the stage with the then head of the FBI, Chris Wray, to sound the alarm about “Chinese Comunist Party aggression”. McCallum listed covert theft, technology transfer from British companies, exploiting academic research and collecting information across the spectrum of society.
He revealed that 50 students linked to the Chinese military left Britain after the government tightened up. He disclosed that MI5 “issued a UK espionage alert on an individual working in think tanks and academia who was in regular contact with Chinese intelligence officers.”
In cyberwar, he said “a wide range of government and commercial targets were attacked by the three so-called ‘Advanced Persistent Threat’ groups which the UK government has attributed to China’s Ministry of State Security”. The head of GCHQ, Anne Keast-Butler, repeated last year that “the Chinese state” was a cyber threat.
So what has changed? Sir Keir Starmer’s government faces inflation, a hard budget, rising debt, higher defence spending and toxic politics, all worsened by three years of fighting on the Ukrainian front, a chaotic presidency in the United States and the risk of wider wars in the Mideast and Asia.
Jonathan Powell, the National Security Adviser, has emerged as the influencer for engagement with China to protect British interests, to offset its Russian alliance and to persuade Xi not to turn his axis of autocrats into a joint attack on the world order.
In my view, the new language from the spies is a sign that a softer line because the stakes are so high. Hence the dithering over China’s vast new London ‘mega-embassy’, the laughable refusal to publish in full a China policy audit which is assuredly in the hands of Beijing and now a legal fiasco which can, thankfully, be blamed in part on the last government.
There is a precedent in British diplomacy between 1939 and 1941 when the Foreign Office shamelessly pandered to Italy and Japan in the vain but not dishonourable hope of keeping them out of the Second World War.
Critics say it adds up to an inglorious strategy of avoidance, diplomats ask “what would you do instead?” An expert in talking to adversaries, Powell – will appear before parliament for the first time amid questions about his role in the collapse of a trial – has dealt with Chinese officials behind closed doors before.
But anyone who dreams that “friendly” contacts with China make them a privileged interlocutor should pause to heed the official advice of MI5 cited by Ken McCallum in his 2022 speech: The motive behind Chinese intelligence service cultivation of Westerners is primarily to make “friends”: once a “friendship” is formed [they] will use the relationship to obtain information which is not legally or commercially available to China and to promote China’s interest.”
“Cultivation of a contact of interest is likely to develop slowly: [they] are very patient. … The aim of these tactics is to create a debt of obligation on the part of the target, who will eventually find it difficult to refuse inevitable requests for favours in return.
Weakness does not work with Xi Jinping, he is a ruler who respects strength; untroubled at home by legal niceties he will use any means, as a trained Communist, to advance the cause. The task for democracies is to use the laws at their disposal with tough counter-espionage and political determination. So far Britain has not met that test.
Michael Sheridan, a longtime foreign correspondent and diplomatic editor of The Independent, is author of ‘The Red Emperor: Xi Jinping and his New China’, out now in paperback from Headline Press at £12.99
